


Kings of New York

by orphan_account



Series: Kings of New York [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, newsies au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The price of newspapers goes up, and Aaron accidentally makes a comment that starts an entire strike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the main story of my Newsies AU. You don't need to have watched Newsies to be able to understand it.   
> This story takes place in 1899.
> 
> There is a brief reference to child abuse in this chapter.

Aaron had already left the lodging house by the time Alex woke up.  This was beginning to make Alex frustrated, because until a few months ago, Alex had always been the first one awake.  He wished he knew why Aaron was avoiding him.

This had all started the night Aaron stayed in Brooklyn.  He and John had been up on the roof, when John said he saw Aaron come up, but quickly disappeared back downstairs. He hadn’t come back until late the next day, and had been rude towards Alex since. 

He pushed his thoughts of Aaron aside and went over to Philip’s bunk to wake him up.  Philip whined as Alex dragged him out of bed and carried him into the washroom.  He placed him down on the counter.

“Why do you always wake me up before everybody else has to wake up?” Philip mumbled sleepily.  

“Because it’s easier to get ready when nobody else is in the washroom,” Alex replied. “Now how's your leg today?”

“Fine. Same as yesterday.”

When Alex had first found Philip, he'd been walking with a limp. He didn't know the full story. He just knew that Philip had broken his leg when he was younger and it hadn’t healed correctly. 

“Yesterday you said it hurt,” said Alex. 

“It's always gonna hurt a little bit,” Philip said as he hopped down from the counter. He winced as his bad leg touched the floor. “I just have to live with it.”

“Fine,” said Alex. “But if it starts hurting too much, tell me, and I'll carry you.”

Philip just nodded and walked away to go use the bathroom while Alex started getting ready for the day. 

***

Alex and Philip were the first ones at breakfast. (Aaron didn't eat breakfast at the lodging house anymore.) Alex paid for both of their meals, and the two of them found a seat and started eating.  Philip nibbled on his food a little before falling asleep on Alex’s lap. 

After a while John and Lafayette joined them. Lafayette was already in his dress with his hair tied up in a ribbon. He was also wearing the shoes and stockings Hercules had bought him for his last birthday.  For as long as Alex had known him, he sold papers everyday as a girl. They usually pretended to be brother and sister, but recently Alex had seen them kissing, and assumed they were pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend. 

Lafayette had been a newsie since he first arrived in America several years ago, so he was used to waking up early. John, however, had only arrived last Fall, and looked like he was struggling to stay awake.

When John arrived last Fall, he'd been covered in bruises. He claimed to have fallen down some stairs. Alex had been able to tell he was a runaway, but that's about all he knew about John. He never asked him about his family, and John had never told him anything. 

“John, you're falling asleep again,” said Alex. 

“I'm still not used to waking up so early every day,” he mumbled in response. 

“Didn't you have to wake up early when you went to school?” Lafayette asked. “Hercules said that he has to.”

“Of course I did,” John replied. “But I got to sleep in on weekends and vacations. Plus I wasn't kept awake every night by dozens of boys.”

“The other boys aren't too loud at night,” said Alex. “I'm able to sleep through it.”

“Okay. So actually, there's only one boy that keeps me up at night. His name is Alex. He talks to me for hours every night when I'm already in bed trying to sleep. New rule. Don't talk to John while he's laying in bed.”

“I cannot promise anything.”

John rolled his eyes and laid his head down on his arms on the table. Alex decided to let him rest and turned to Lafayette. “So are you and Herc pretending to be a couple instead of siblings now?”

Lafayette’s eyes grew wide. “Why would you say that?” he asked. 

“I saw you two kissing the other day,” he responded. “I was just walking by and decided not to bother you at the time.”

John lifted his head back up. “Wait. Where was I?”

Alex looked over at him as he spoke. “That was when I left you with Philip for a little while. Remember?”

John just nodded and dropped his head back onto his arms. 

Alex looked back over towards Lafayette whose face was bright red. “I...Well, uh, we were trying to see what would sell more papers. So that is why you saw us kissing. We were just trying it out to see if we’d made more money as a couple or as siblings.”

“So did it work?” Alex asked. 

Lafayette shrugged. “It's hard to tell. Nobody's been buying papers recently because all they've been talking about for weeks is the trolley strike. Something more exiting needs to happen.”

Alex heard John start snoring, and he and Lafayette both turned to look at him and laughed. 

“So why haven't you ever brought me up to the roof?” Lafayette asked. “You always go up there with John, and you and Aaron used to disappear up there as well.”

It was Alex’s turn to blush now. “Well, it's just quiet up there. If you really want to, I'll take you up. We can go today.”

Lafayette raised his eyebrows at him. “Why are you blushing? I just asked you why you go to the roof. What exactly do you and John do up there?”

Alex stood up quickly knocking Philip off his lap, causing him to wake up. “It doesn't matter. We should be leaving soon anyways. We have to meet up with Hercules as the distribution center before the line gets to long.” He shook John awake. “Come on. Let's go.”

John and Lafayette both got up from the table and Alex picked up Philip. (Philip was too tired to protest.) Together the four of them made their way to the distribution center. 

***

When they arrived as the distribution center, Alex placed Philip on the ground and noticed that all the boys who had arrived before them looked very upset. He turned to Aaron who was standing closest to him. “What's going on?” he asked. 

Aaron raised his stack of papers up. “They raised the price. I can't afford to pay any more than I already do, so I have less papers to sell which means I'll be making less money.”

“How much did they raise the price?”

It was Hercules who answered this time. He'd walked over to the group as Aaron had been speaking. “It costs sixty cents per hundred instead of fifty.”

He felt Philip tugging on his shirt and looked down at him. “They'll lower the prices again, right?  It's probably just for today.”

Alex frowned and didn't answer. “I'll be right back,” he said and walked over to the counter. 

“I heard they raised the prices, Lee,” Alex said to the man who sold them their papers, Charles Lee. “It's only temporary, right?”

Lee glared at him. “As far as I know, it's permanent. Unless you're going to buy some papers I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I wasn't planning on staying to chat anyways,” he replied and walked back over to everybody. 

“Lee says the new prices are permanent,” he explained. “There has to be a way to get them to lower them again.”

“I doubt we can do anything about it,” said Aaron. “We’re just kids.  All the newspapers in the city raised their prices. How are we supposed to get them all to lower them.”

“Well if we stopped selling their papers, they wouldn't be making any money because we wouldn't be buying any.”

“Are you suggesting we go on strike?”

Alex’s face lit up. “That's a great idea, Aaron.”

Aaron’s eyes widened. “Wait. No. I didn't mean it like that. It was just a joke.”

It was too late, however.  All the other boys began whispering to each other about the idea of going on strike. 


	2. Chapter 2

Aaron was deeply regretting having spoken at all.  He’d put an idea in Alexander’s head, and now he was actually starting a strike.  The papers Aaron had been holding were suddenly ripped out of his hands.  He looked up and saw Alex standing on a ledge to get the other boys’ attention.  

“Alexander, those papers are mine.  I paid for them,” Aaron said.  “Give them back.”

“Well you aren’t going to be selling today,” he replied, looking down at Aaron.  He then spoke up louder for the other boys to hear.  “Nobody’s going to be selling today.  We’re going to stop selling any papers until they lower the prices.  All the papers in the city have raised their prices ten cents per hundred.”

“I can’t afford to stop selling, Alex,” Aaron said as he tried to grab his papers back, but Lafayette and Hercules held him back.  

“This was  _ your _ idea, Burr,” said Lafayette.

“None of us can afford to sell with the new prices,” Alex said, speaking to the crowd.  “We can start selling again as soon as they lower the prices.  Tomorrow, we’ll go around the city and ask the other newsies to join us.  I’ll start writing up a plan once we get back to the lodging house tonight.  If anybody wants to help, you can come ask me.”

Alex ripped up a few of the papers he’d stolen from Aaron and threw the rest to the ground.  Some of the other boys joined in in ripping up their papers as well.  There was a lot of cheering, and Aaron just wanted to sell some papers and make money.  Since it seemed like that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon, he decided just to leave.  

Alex was still talking when he managed to slip away. Alex was still talking, but he wasn’t really listening anymore. Since there wasn’t really anything better to do, he decided to go back to the lodging house and get some reading done.  He started to make his way back to the lodging house. 

***

Alexander used to give Aaron reading lessons up on the roof every day.  Shortly after John had arrived, the lessons became less and less frequent, until they finally stopped.  By then Aaron was able to read enough, so that he could continue these lessons on his own.

Usually, he kept a copy of that day’s newspaper and brought it up to practice reading, but Alex had ripped his up.  Instead, he grabbed a copy of an older newspaper from under Alex’s bed, where he kept several.

The paper was dated about a month after John had showed up at the lodging house.  Because of that, Aaron highly doubted that Alex had read it.  By that time he’d been spending all his free time up on the roof with John, probably kissing. That meant he didn’t read the papers as often as he had before John arrived.

Aaron started flipping through the paper reading a few articles.  The news was all old of course, but reading it did help Aaron improve his reading.  He eventually came across an article that talked about how one of Henry Laurens’ sons had gone missing a month prior to the article being published.  The boy’s name was John Laurens. 

That meant that the Laurens boy had gone missing around the same time John had shown up at the lodging house.  John had been an obvious runaway, so it was pretty likely that they were the same person.  However, John was a common name.  Aaron was so lost in thought, he hadn’t noticed anybody show up on the roof.

“Have you seen Alex?” 

Aaron looked up and saw John.  “I haven’t seen him,” he responded.  “Shouldn’t  _ you _ know where he is.  He hasn’t left your side since you showed up last November.”

John shrugged.  “I lost him in the crowd on the way back.  Everybody was trying to talk to him at once.  I thought I’d try the roof, since it’s kinda become our place.”

Aaron took a deep breath, and tried not to get to angry. “It was  _ our _ spot first. Before  _ you _ showed up, we spend every day up here having reading lesson.”  He hadn't meant to say the last part about the reading lessons.  Nobody was supposed to know he couldn't read. 

“Why would you need reading lessons?” John asked. 

“It doesn't matter, John  _ Laurens _ .”

John seemed to freeze.  “I haven’t told anybody here my last name.  What makes you think that’s it?”

Aaron picked up the paper and started to read it out loud.  “‘A month ago today, John Laurens, son of Henry Laurens, dis-disappeared.’ This was published last December.  You showed up in November last year. So is this you? Or is it just a coincidence.”

“Don’t tell anyone.  Especially not now.  I’d probably be murdered if any of the boys found out my dad owns the  _ World _ .”

Aaron  _ could  _ tell everybody.  It might make John leave, so Alex would be his again.  He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  “Fine,” he said after a couple minutes. “So why would you run away from home if you’re rich?  You actually have a family, unlike most of the boys here.”

“My dad might be rich, but that doesn’t make him a good dad,” said John.  “After I killed...After my little brother died, he stopped caring for me.  He usually ignored me.  Sometimes he’d yell at me.  I left after he hurt me.”

“Have you told Alex?”

“I haven’t told anybody anything about my family, because I really don’t want them to know who my dad is.  Especially now with the strike and everything.”

Aaron was about to reply, when Alex came running over to them.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” he said, sounding out of breath.  “Wait since when are you two friends.”

They both turned to look at him and said, “We aren’t.”

“Well anyways, I finished figuring out who’s going where tomorrow, so we can spread the strike around the city.”  He paused for a moment and held up a piece of paper, which Aaron assumed was where Alex wrote down the plan.  

“You’re telling us this why?” asked Aaron.

“Because I’ve volunteered the two of you to come with me to Brooklyn tomorrow to convince Thomas and his boys to join in the strike. _"_

Well that was just _great_.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions or anything feel free to leave a comment, or ask me on my tumblr kingof-santafe.


End file.
